The Face of Chaos Part 4

They went first southwest to see if perhaps the witch or her agents might be found at home, but the manor house and its surrounds were deserted, the yard criss-crossed with cart-tracks from heavily laden wagons' wheels.

The caravan's track was easy to follow.

Riding north without a backward glance on his Tros horse, Jihan swaying in her saddle on his right, he had one last impulse: he ripped the problematical Storm G.o.d's amulet from around his throat, dropped it into a quaggy marsh. Where he was going, Vashanka's name was meaningless. Other names were hallowed, and other attributes given to the weather G.o.ds.

When he was sure he had successfully cast it aside, and the G.o.d's voice had not come ringing with awful laughter in his ear (for all G.o.ds are tricksters, and war G.o.ds worst of any), he relaxed in his saddle. The omens for this venture were good: they'd completed their preparations in half the time he'd antic.i.p.ated, so that he could start it while the day was young.

Crit sat long at his customary table in the common room after Tempus had gone.

By rights it should have been Straton or some Sacred Band pair who succeeded Tempus, someone ... anyone but him. After a time he pulled out his pouch and emptied its contents on to the plank table: three tiny metal figures, a fishhook made from an eagle's claw and abalone sh.e.l.l, a single die, an old field decoration won in Azehur while the Slaughter Priest still led the original Sacred Band.

He scooped them up and threw them as a man might throw in wager: the little gold Storm G.o.d fell beneath the lead figurine of a fighter, propping the man upright; the fishhook embraced the die, which came to rest with one dot facing up Strat's war name was Ace. The third figure, a silver rider mounted, sat square atop the field star - Abarsis had slipped it over his head so long ago the ribbon had crumbled away.

Content with the omens his private prognosticators gave, he collected them and put them away. He'd wanted Tempus to ask him to join him, not hand him fifty men's lives to yea or nay. He took such work too much to heart; it lay heavy on him, worse than the task force's weight had been, and he'd only just begun. But that was why Tempus picked him - he was conscientious to a fault.

He sighed and rose and quit the hostel, riding aimlessly through the foetid streets. d.a.m.ned town was a pit, a bubo, a sore that wouldn't heal. He couldn't trust his task force to some subordinate, though how he was going to run them while stomping around vainly trying to fill Tempus's sandals, he couldn't say.

His horse, picking his route, took him by the Vulgar Unicorn where Straton would soon be 'discussing sensitive matters' with One-Thumb.

By rights he should go up to the palace, pay a call on Kadakithis, 'make nice'

(as Straton said) to Vashanka's priest-of-record Molin, visit the Mageguild ...

He shook his head and spat over his horse's shoulder. He hated politics.

And what Tempus had told him about Niko's misfortune and Janni's death still rankled. He remembered the foreign fighter Niko had made him turn loose - Vis.

Vis, who'd come to Tempus, bearing hurt and slain, with a message from Jubal.

That, and what Straton had gotten from the hawkmask they'd given Ischade, plus the vampire woman's own hints, allowed him to triangulate Jubal's position like a sailor navigating by the stars. Vis was supposed to come to him, though. He'd wait. If his hunch was right, he could put Jubal and his hawkmasks to work for Kadakithis without either knowing - or at least having to admit - that was the case.

If so, he'd be free to take the band north - what they wanted, expected, and would now fret to do with Tempus gone. Only Tempus's mystique had kept them this long; Crit would have a mutiny, or empty barracks, if he couldn't meet their expectation of war to come. They weren't babysitters, slum police, or palace praetorians; they collected exploits, not soldats. He began to form a plan, shape up a scenario, answer questions sure to be asked him later, rehearsing replies in his mind.

Unguided, his horse led him slumward - a bam-rat, it was taking the quickest, straightest way home. When he looked up and out, rather than down and in, he was almost through the Shambles, near White Foal Bridge and the vampire's house, quiet now, unprepossessing in the light of day. Did she sleep in the day? He didn't think she was that kind of vampire; there had been no bloodless, no punctures on the boy stiff against the drop's back door when one of the street men found it. But what did she do, then, to her victims? He thought of Straton, the way he'd looked at the vampire, the exchange between the two he'd overheard and partly understood. He'd have to keep those two quite separate, even if Ischade was putatively willing to work with, rather than against, them. He spurred his horse on by.

Across the bridge, he rode southwest, skirting the thick of Downwind. When he sighted the Stepsons' barracks, he still didn't know if he could succeed in leading Stepsons. He rehea.r.s.ed it wryly in his mind: 'Life to all. Most of you don't know me but by reputation, but I'm here to ask you to bet your lives on me, not once, but as a matter of course over the next months ...'

Still, someone had to do it. And he'd have no trouble with the Sacred Band teams, who knew him in the old days, when he'd had a right-side partner, before that vulnerability was made painfully clear, and he gave up loving the death seekers - or anything else which could disappoint him.

It mattered not a whit, he decided, if he won or if he lost, if they let him advise them or deserted post and duty to follow Tempus north, as he would have done if the sly old soldier hadn't bound him here with promise and responsibility.

He'd brought Niko's bow. The first thing he did - after leaving the stables, where he saw to his horse and checked on Niko's pregnant mare - was seek the wounded fighter.

The young officer peered at him through swollen, blackened eyes, saw the bow and nodded, unlaced its case and stroked the wood recurve when Critias laid it on the bed. Haifa dozen men were there when he'd knocked and entered - three teams who'd come with Niko and his partner down to Ranke on Sacred Band business. They left, warning softly that Crit mustn't tire him - they'd just got him back.

'He's left me the command,' Crit said, though he'd thought to talk ofhawkmasks and death squads and Nisibisi - a witch and one named Vis.

'Gilgamesh sat by Enkidu seven days, until a maggot fell from his nose.' It was the oldest legend the fighters shared, one from Enlil's time when the Lord Storm and Enki (Lord Earth) ruled the world, and a fighter and his friend roamed far.

Crit shrugged and ran a spread hand through feathery hair. 'Enkidu was dead; you're not. Tempus has just gone ahead to prepare our way.'

Niko rolled his head, propped against the whitewashed wall, until he could see Crit clearly: 'He followed G.o.dsign; I know that look.'

'Or witchsign.' Crit squinted, though the light was good, three windows wide and afternoon sun raying the room. 'Are you all right - beyond the obvious, I mean?'

'I lost two partners, too close in time. I'll mend.'

Let's hope, Crit thought but didn't say, watching Niko's expressionless eyes. 'I saw to your mare.'

'My thanks. And for the bow. Janni's bier is set for morning. Will you help me with it? Say the words?'

Crit rose; the operator in him still couldn't bear to officiate in public, yet if. he didn't, he'd never hold these men. 'With pleasure. Life to you. Stepson.'

'And to you. Commander.'

And that was that. His first test, pa.s.sed; Niko and Tempus had shared a special bond. .

That night, he called them out behind the barracks, ordering a feast to be served on the training field, a wooden amphitheatre of sorts. By then Straton had come out to join him, and Strat wasn't bashful with the mess staff or the hired help.

Maybe it would work out; maybe together they could make half a Tempus, which was the least this endeavour needed, though Crit would never pair again ...

He put it to them when all were well disposed from wine and roasted pig and lamb, standing and flatly telling them Tempus had left, putting them in his charge. There fell a silence and in it he could hear his heart pound. He'd been calmer ringed with Tyse hillmen, or alone, his partner slain, against a Rankan squadron.

'Now, we've got each other, and for good and fair, I say to you, the quicker we quit this cesspool for the clean air of high peaks war, the happier I'll be.'

He could hardly see their faces in the dark with the torches snapping right before his face. But it didn't matter; they had to see him, not he them. Crit heard a raucous growl from fifty throats become a.s.sent, and then a cheer, and laughter, and Strat, beside and off a bit, gave him a soldier's sign: all's well.

He raised a hand, and they fell quiet; it was a power he'd never tried before: 'But the only way to leave with honour is to work your tours out.' They grumbled. He continued: 'The Riddler's left busy-work sorties enough - hazardous duty actions, by guild book rules; I'll post a list - that we can work off our debt to Kitty-Cat in a month or so.'

Someone nay'd that. Someone else called: 'Let him finish, then we'll have our say.'

'It means naught to me, who deserts to follow. But to us, to cadre honour, it's a slur. So I've thought about it, since I'm hot to leave myself, and here's what I propose. All stay, or go. You take your vote. I'll wait. But Tempus wants no man on his right at Wizardwall who hasn't left in good standing with the guild.'

When they'd voted, with Straton overseeing the count, to abide by the rules they'd lived to enforce, he said honestly that he was glad about the choice they'd made. 'Now I'm going to split you into units, and each unit has a choice: find a person, a mercenary not among us now, a warm body trained enough to hold a sword and fill your bed, and call him "brother" - long enough to induct him in your stead. Then we'll leave the town yet guarded by "Stepsons" and that name's enough, with what we've done here, to keep the peace. The guild has provisions for man-steading; we'll collect from each to fill a pot to hire them; they'll billet here, and we'll ride north a unit at a time and meet up in Tyse, next high moon, and surprise theRiddler.'

So he put it to them, and so they agreed.

NECROMANT.

C. J. Cherryh

The wind came from the north tonight, out of chilly distances, sending an unaccustomed rain-washed freshness through the streets of Downwind, along the White Foal where traffic came and went across the only bridge. The Stepsons had finally done the obvious and set up a guard post here; in these fractious times, things were bad indeed. Previous holders of power in Sanctuary had been content to watch and gather information. Now (when subtlety is lacking, one tries the clenched fist) they meant to control every move between Downwind and the Maze.

Tonight another guard was dead, pinned to the post beside the guardhouse; the second one - no one knew where. The word spread in all those quarters where folk were interested to know, so that traffic on the bridge increased despite the rumbles of oncoming thunder, and those who for a day or two had been caught on one side of the White Foal or the other heard and went skittering, windblown, across the White Foal bridge, some shuddering at the erstwhile guard whose eyes still stared; some mocking the dead, how whimsical he looked, thus open-mouthed as if about to speak.

For those who knew, the stationing of that corpse was a signature: the Downwind knew and did not gossip, not even in the security of Mama Becho's, which sat, a scruffy, doors-open building, a tolerable walk from the. White Foal bridge. Only the fact was reported there, that for the third time that week the bridge guard had come to grief; there was general grim laughter.

The news found its way to the Maze on the other side and drew thoughtful stares and considerably less mirth. Certain folk left the Vulgar Unicorn with news to carry; certain ones called for another drink; and if there was gossip of what this chain of murders might mean, it was done in the quietest places and with worried looks. Those who had left did so with that skill of Maze-born skulkers, pretending indirection. They shivered at the sight of beggars in the streets, at urchins and old men, who were back again at posts deserted while the bridge guard had (briefly) stood.

The news had not yet reached the strange ships rocking to the wind in Sanctuary's harbour, or the glittering luxury ofKadakithis, who amused himself in his palace this night and who would not, without understanding more things than he did, have known that the underpinnings of his safety trembled. The report did, and soon, reach the Stepsons' Sanctuary-side headquarters, after which a certain man sat alone with uncertainties. Dolon was his name. Critias had left him in charge, when the senior Stepsons had gone, quietly, band by band, to the northern war. 'You've got all you need,' Critias had said. Now Dolon, in charge of all there was, sat listening to the first patter of rain against the wall and wondering whether he dared, tonight, the morale of his command being what it was, send a band to the bridge to gather up the one available body before the dawn.

Of even more concern to him was the missing one, what might have become of Stilcho; whether he had gone into the river, or run away, or whether he might have been carried off alive, to some worse and slower fate, spilling secrets while he died. The house by the bridge was a burned-out sh.e.l.l; but burning the beggars' headquarters and creating a few Downwinder corpses had not solved the matter, only scattered it.

He heard steps outside the building, splashing through the rain. Someone knocked at the outside door; he heard that door groan open, heard the burr of quiet voices as his own guards pa.s.sed someone through. The matter reached his door then, a second, louder rap.

'Mor-am, sir.' The door opened, and his guard let in the one he had sent for, this wreckage of a man. Handsome once ... at least they said that he had been.

The youth's eyes remained untouched by the burn-scars, dark-lashed and dark browed eyes. Haunted, yes; long habituated to terrors.

The commander indicated a chair and the one-time hawkmask limped to it and sat down, staring at him from those dark eyes. The nose was broken, scarred across the bridge; the fine mouth remained intact, but twitched at times with an uncontrollable tic that might be fear - not enviable was Mor-am's state, nowadays, among latter-day Stepsons.

'There's a man,' Dolon said at once, in a low, soft voice, 'pinned to the White Foal bridge tonight. How would this go on happening? Shall I guess?'

The tic grew more p.r.o.nounced, spread to the left, scar-edged eye. The hands jerked as well, until they found each other and clasped for stability.

'Stepson?' Mor-am asked needlessly, a hoa.r.s.e thin voice: that too the fire had ruined.

Dolon nodded and waited, demanding far more than that.

'They would,' Mor-am said, lifting his shoulder, seeming to give apologies for those that had ruined him for life and made him what he was. 'The bridge, you know - they - h-have to come and go -'

'So now we and the hawkmasks have a thing in common.'

'It's the same t-thing. Hawkmasks and Stepsons. To t-them.'

Dolon thought on that a moment, without affront, but he a.s.sumed a scowl.

'Certainly,' he said, 'it's the same thing where you're concerned. Isn't it?'

'I d-don't t-take Jubal's pay.'

'You take your life,' Dolon whispered, elbows on the desk, 'from us. Every day you live.'

'Y-you're not the same S-Stepsons.'

Now the scowl was real, and the moment's sneer cleared itself from the man's ruined face.

'I don't like losing men,' Dolon said. 'And it comes to me -hawkmask, that we might find a use for you.' He let that lie a moment, enjoying the anxiety that caused, letting the hawkmask sweat. 'You know,' he said further, 'we're talking about your life. Now there's this woman, hawkmask, there's this woman - we know.

Maybe you do. You will. Jubal's hired her, just to keep her out of play. Maybe for more just now. But a hawkmask like yourself - maybe you could tell her just what you just told me ... Common cause. That's what it is. You know who's looking for you? I'm sure you know. I'm sure you know what those enemies can do.

What we might do; who knows?'

The tic became steady, like a pulse. Sweat glistened on Mor-am's brow.

'So, well,' Dolon said, 'I want you to go to a certain place and take a message.

There's those will watch you -just so you get there safe and sound. You can trust that. And you talk to this woman and you tell her how Stepsons happen to send her a hawkmask for a messenger, how you're hunted - oh, tell her anything you like. Or lie. It's all the same. Just give the paper to her.'

'What's it s-say?'

'Curiosity, hawkmask? It's an offer of employ. Trust us, hawk-mask. Her name's Ischade. Tell her this: we want this beggar-king. More, we've got one man missing on that bridge tonight. Alive, maybe. And we want him back. You're another matter ... but I'd advise you come back to us. I'd advise you don't look her in the eye if you can avoid it. Friendly advice, hawkmask. And it's all the truth.'

Mor-am had gone very pale. So perhaps he had heard the rumours of the woman.

Sweat ran, in that portion of his face unglazed by scars. The tic had stopped, for whatever reason.

The wind caught Haught's cloak as he ran, rain spattered his face and he let it go, splashing through the puddles as he approached the under-stair door within the Maze.

He rapped a pattern, heard the stirring within and the bar thrust up. The door swung inward, on light and warmth and a woman, on Moria, who whisked him inside and s.n.a.t.c.hed his dripping wrap. He put chilled arms about her,'hugged her tight, still shivering, still out of breath.

'They got a Stepson,' he said. 'By the bridge. Like before. Mradhon's coming another way.'

'Who?' Moria gripped his arms in violence. 'Who did they get?'

'Not him. Not your brother. I know that.' His teeth wanted to chatter, not from the chill. He remembered the scurrying in the alley, the footsteps behind him for a way. He had lost them. He believed he had. He left Moria's grasp and went to the fireside, to stand by the tiny hearthside, the twisted, mislaid bricks.

He looked back at Moria standing by the door, feeling aches in all his scars.

'They almost got us.'

'They?'

'Beggars.'

She wrapped her arms about herself, rolled a glance towards the door as someone came racing up at speed, splashing through the rain. A knock followed, the right one, and she whisked the door open a second time, for Mradhon Vis, who came in drenched and spattered with mud on the left side.

Moria stared half a heartbeat and slammed shut the door, dropping the bar down.

Mradhon stamped a muddy puddle on the aged boards and stripped his cloak off, showing a drowned, dark-bearded face, eyes still wild with the chase.

'Slid,' he said, taking his breath. 'There's a patrol out. There's watchers You get it?'

Haught reached inside his doublet, pulled out a small leather purse. He tossed it at Mradhon Vis with a touch of confidence recovered. At least this they had done right.

Then Moria's eyes lightened. The hope came back to them as Mradhon shook the bright spill of coins into her palm, three, four, five of them, good silver; a handful of coppers.

But the darkness came back again when she looked up at them, one and the other.

'Where did you get it, for what?'

'Lifted it,' Haught said.